The doctor will see you now: Mark Waller is Leicester’s saviour
The first piece of transfer news out of Filbert Way this summer may have slipped your notice. At the start of June, news leaked out that Leicester had swooped to bring in a highly rated prospect from north of the border.
His name is Mark Waller, and he isn’t going to fill in at the heart of defence, he isn’t going to replace Youri Tielemans, and he certainly isn’t going to solve the team’s inability to head the ball away at corners. He does, however, have one defining feature: a medical degree.
The unheralded Dr. Waller is formerly of Rangers, Hull City Tigercats and, crucially, Liverpool, where he may have picked up a bunch of tips on how to deal with asthmatic professional athletes. According to the John Percy tweet upon which the entire premise of this article is based, his signing is a “huge coup”. Our sources tell us that he’s the Erling Haaland of medical science.
“Bit of #lcfc transfer news (sort of): Leicester are appointing #Rangers doctor Mark Waller to a similar position after agreeing compensation. Dr Waller has previously worked with the Eng u21s, Liverpool & Villa, and his appointment is regarded as a huge coup ahead of next season”
We’re hesitant to christen the dawning of this great website by accusing a bunch of medical professionals of having no idea what they’re doing. But it’s difficult to escape the feeling that someone, or some people, at Leicester have made some extremely bad decisions on the injury front over the last couple of years. A couple of injuries is unfortunate, the occasional defensive injury crisis is a fact of life, a thousand injuries in two years feels like negligence.
So if the only thing Leicester did this summer was replace the medical team, it would be a significant improvement; a new medical team and a set-piece coach would probably win them the title. Signing a doctor who at least appears to be competent is a positive first step. It’s not possible for a regular Premier League team to overcome the yawning financial divide between them and the Super League Six with 10+ first team players absent for the majority of the season.
Ever since Covid, that has been the case for Leicester. During Project Restart and then again in the second half of the following season, they lost crucial players for long stretches of time. The forgotten part of both fifth place finishes is the number of injuries they suffered in the run-in (although anyone who witnessed Ryan Bennett at the heart of defence and George Hirst being sent on to save the day against Tottenham and Manchester United should have it seared onto their brains forever).
Even last year, which was a dismal grind for the most part, Leicester only finished six points from a Europa League spot. Our proprietary prediction software confirms that a fully fit squad would have gained the couple of wins necessary to sneak back into Europe quite comfortably.
An ode to what might have been
The missed opportunities are the most frustrating aspect of the whole sorry injury affair, and Brendan Rodgers, Jon Rudkin, and the gang had to try to do something about it. The truth is that we have no idea how good the current Leicester squad is. Despite all of the failings across last season, they finished two wins from the top six. Ahead of the campaign, it felt like the strongest squad the club has ever had. Maybe the end result is proof that it was.
The Leicester Mercury made the point last week that Leicester’s ‘best’ XI hasn’t played together since January 2021. Needless to say, that is quite a long time. Were I head of the medical department at Leicester City, I would be updating my CV. I would also be neglecting to mention that fact on said CV.
The other interesting aspect of the match back in January 2021 is that Leicester won. An event in itself, given some of what we witnessed last season, but notable primarily because it sent them top of the league. By my count, eight members of that side have suffered at least one serious injury since then (Kasper Schmeichel, Timothy Castagne, and Marc Albrighton are the three who haven’t, if you’re interested).
How different would our view of this summer be had they not? Of the entire squad available that day, only Cengiz Under has departed since and, if we’re honest, he had departed in spirit long before then anyway. To all intents and purposes, the squad is probably better now than it was eighteen months ago. At least while Tielemans is in transfer purgatory.
Who’s to blame?
From where we sit today, there are basically three interpretations of what happened last season:
The number of injuries decimated a talented Leicester squad and the volume of games meant there was no time to recover.
The squad bought into its own hype and the players aren’t as good as we thought.
The manager is a fraud.
It’s fair to say that on these hallowed pages, interpretations 1) and 2) dominate. On Twitter, 3) is the most popular option. All three are defensible positions.
Rodgers himself, while presumably not a huge fan of the third hypothesis, has flittered between the first two. The party line around the time of THE trip to the City Ground in January was more in favour of 2); Rodgers started talking about a ‘refresh’ and hinting darkly that all the players might be useless dweebs who needed to be bundled onto the first train out of town.
That’s the line that caught fire among most of the Leicester fan base as well. The ‘refresh’ comment turned into an expectation of a wholesale rebuild, which in turn put pressure on to sign players - any players - as soon as possible and ship out approximately 15 members of the first team squad.
What has gone under the radar is how before and after that moment the tone was much more in favour of blaming the injury record. This was particularly true when Rodgers was feeling himself after playing Hamza Choudhury in central defence against Watford and scratching out the win over Liverpool with a decimated squad.
It was also true later in the season, with James Maddison, in particular, making frequent reference to the injury situation when explaining how difficult the season had been.
How to make Leicester great again
To accept the argument that injuries, above all else, explain the slump from Champions League contender to becoming Crystal Palace North requires a substantial leap of faith. But if we do accept it, then the need to force a bunch of signings feels much less acute.
Seen from that angle, the prospects for the season ahead are a lot more positive. There are fewer games, no European football, and time to get the first team squad back playing together for the first time in ages.
Leicester have been largely bad at self-scouting, both on the pitch and off it, over the last couple of years. It’s why they concede the same goal roughly 50 times a season and why they are currently in the middle of a transfer window without anyone running the transfer department. But this is a sign that the penny might have dropped. The injury record is a problem that has to be fixed if they are to have any hope of keeping pace at the top end of the league.
80% of success is showing up, ideally without any torn muscles or debilitating ailments, and in the quest for that goal Leicester have already done the most important bit of business of the summer.